1 of 8 Components: The Risk Factor

I´d answer it as follows: …… risk gets a meaning for me the moment I realize that now I have less than I had before – which starts bothering me, because:

I won´t get exactly this chance again for another try

it takes months to have the invested money back in my pockets

I lost time, maybe a half year or 2 years and now I have to do it all over again which slows me down compared to others (which we shouldn´t do)

RISK means we gamble! …. we all gamble at some point in life ….

Wikipedia (German) defines risk as follows: Risk is an incident with a negative effect or consequence.

The English Wikipedia defiens risk as: Risk is the potential of losing something of value. A value can be gained or lost when taking risk resulting from a given action or activity. It is an intentional interaction with uncertainty and the risk perception is a subjective judgement people make….

Now right here it becomes interesting! – doesn´t it?

Have you ever argued with a friend, spouse or co-worker about a past prediction of the future which didn´t appear in the way both of you thought or hoped for, and the negative result now feels differently bad to each of you? The argue can be that one of you has a different value evaluation than the other. VALUE.

The individual value definition and perception is the clue when gambling and risking value. 100 bucks can be bad for one of you but no big deal for the other one.

Of course this detail is completely different when you make decisions for a company goal because value then is written in clear figures. There´s no way to argue about any “feeling” of its evalutation. Figures are hard facts.

My take away for you is: when ever you face a certain risk factor in decision making, be sure you know how much value you might lose and how long it takes to overcome this lost. Know how long or how much it takes to get it back. What kind of loss is in it?

If you are aware of all this, then there´s no “big” risk! I´d call it calculated risk.